Part 3

“This here,” said Simon, “is an everlastin’ fix! a mile and a quarter square and fenced in all round. What’s a _reasonable_ man to do? Ain’t I bin workin’ and strivin’ all for the best? Ain’t I done my duty? Cuss that mahogany box. I wish the man that invented it had had his head sawed off with a cross-cut, _just_ afore he thought on’t. Now thar’s the sence _in short cards_. All’s fair, and cheat and cheat alike is the order; and the longest pole knocks down persimmon. But whar’s the reason in one of your darned boxes, full of springs and the like, and the better _no_ advantages, _except_ now and then when he kin kick up a squabble, and _the dealer’s afeard of him_.

“I’m for doin’ things on the square. What’s a man without his honour? Ef natur give me a gift to beat a feller at ‘old sledge,’ and the like, it’s all right! But whar’s the justice in a thing like farrer, that ain’t got but one side! It’s strange what a horrir I have for the cussed thing. No matter how I make an honest rise, I’m sure to ‘back it off’ at farrer. As my wife says, ‘_farrer’s my besettin’ sin_.’ It’s a weakness—a soft spot, it’s a—a—let me see!—it’s a way I’ve got of a runnin’ agin Providence. But hello! here’s Dennis.”

When the inn-keeper walked up, Captain Suggs remarked to him, that there was a “little paper out,” signed by Tom Garrett, in his _official capacity_, that was calculated to hurt feelins’, if he remained in town, and so he desired that his horse might be saddled and brought out.

Summeval replied to this by presenting to the Captain a slip of paper containing entries of many charges against Suggs, and in favour of the “Union Hotel.”

“All right,” said Suggs; “I’ll be over in a couple of weeks and settle.”

“Can’t wait; want money to buy provisions; account been standing two years, thirty-one dollars and fifty cents is money these days,” said Dennis, with unusual firmness.

“Confound your ugly face,” vociferated Suggs, “_I’ll give you my note!_ that’s enough among gentlemen, I suppose?”

“Hardly,” returned the inn-keeper, “hardly; we want the cash; your note ain’t worth the trouble of writin’ it.”

“Dam you!” roared Suggs, “dam you for a biscuit-headed _nullifier_! I’ll give you a mortgage on the best half section of land in the county; _south_ half of 13, 21, 29!”

“Captain Suggs,” said Dennis, drawing off his coat, “you’ve called me a nullifier, and that’s what I _won’t_ stand from _no_ man. Strip! and I’ll whip as much dog out of you as’ll make a full pack of hounds. You swindlin’ robber!”

This hostile demonstration alarmed the Captain, and he set in to soothe his angry landlord.

“Sum, old fel,” he said, in his most honeyed tones, “Sum, old fel! be easy. I’m not a fightin’ man—” and here Suggs drew himself up with dignity, “I’m not a fightin’ man _except_ in the cause of my country! _Thar_ I’m _allers_ found! Come, old fellow—do you reckon ef you’d been a nullifier, I’d ever been ketched at your house? No, no! you _ain’t_ no part of a nullifier, but you are rather hard down on your Union friends that allers puts up with you. Say, won’t you take the mortgage?—the land’s richly worth a thousand dollars, and let me have Old Bill.”

The heart of Dennis was melted at the appeal thus made. It was to his good-fellowship and his party feelings. So, putting on his coat, he remarked that he “rather thought he would take the mortgage. However,” he added, seeing Mrs. Dennis standing at the door of the tavern watching his proceedings, “he would see his wife about it.”

The Captain and Dennis approached the landlady and made known the state of the case.

“You see, Cousin Betsey,”—Suggs always _cousined_ any lady whom he wished to _cozen_—“you see, Cousin Betsey, the fact is, I’m down just now, in the way of money, and you and Summeval bein’ afraid I’ll run away and never come back—”

“T’aint that _I’m_ afraid of,” said Mrs. Dennis.

“What then?” asked Suggs.

“Of your comin’ back, eatin’ us out of house and home, and _never payin’ nothin’_!”

“Well,” said the Captain, slightly confused at the lady’s directness; “well, seein’ that’s the way the mule kicks, as I was sayin’, I proposed to Sum here, as long as him and you distrusts an old _Union_ friend that’s stuck by your house like a tick even when the red-mouthed nullifiers swore you was feedin’ us _soap-tails_ on _bull-beef_ and _blue collards_—I say, as long as that’s the case, I propose to give you a mortgage on the south half of 21, 13, 29. It’s the best half section in county, and it’s worth forty times the amount of your bill.”

“It looks like that ought to do,” said Summeval, who was grateful to the Captain for defending his house against the slanders of the nullifiers; “and seein’ that Suggs has always patronized the Union and _voted the whole ticket_—”

“Never _split_ in my life,” dropped in Suggs, with emphasis.

“I,” continued Dennis, “am for takin’ the mortgage, and lettin’ him take Old Bill and go; for I know it would be a satisfaction to the nullifiers to have him put in jail.”

“Yes,” quoth the Captain, sighing, “I’m about to be tuk up and made a martyr of on account of the _Union_; but I’ll die true to my prin_si_pples, see if I don’t.”

“They shan’t take you,” said Dennis, his long, lank form stiffening with energy as he spoke; “as long as they put it on _that_ hook, hanged ef they shall. Give us the mortgage and slope!”

“You ain’t got no rights to that land; I jist know it, or you wouldn’t want to mortgage it for a tavern bill,” shouted Mrs. Dennis; “and I tell you and Summeval _both_, that Old Bill don’t go out of that stable till the money’s paid—mind, I say _money_—into _my_ hand,” and here the good lady turned off and called Bob, the stable-boy, to bring her the stable key.

The Captain and Summeval looked at each other like two children school-boys. It was clear that no terms short of payment in money would satisfy Mrs. Dennis. Suggs saw that Dennis had become interested in his behalf; so acting upon the idea, he suggested:

“Dennis, suppose _you loan me the money_?”

“Egad, Suggs, I’ve been thinkin’ of that; but as I have only a fifty dollar bill, and my wife’s key bein’ turned on that, there’s no chance. Drott it, I’m sorry for you.”

“Well the Lord’ll purvide,” said Suggs.

As Captain Suggs could not get away that day, evidently, he arranged, through his friend Summeval, with the Clerk, not to issue a capias until the next afternoon. Having done this, he cast around for some way of raising the wind; but the fates were against him, and at eleven o’clock that night, he went to bed in a fit of the blues, that three pints of whiskey had failed to dissipate. An hour or two after the Captain had got between the sheets, and after every one else was asleep, he heard some one walk unsteadily, but still softly, up stairs. An occasional hiccup told that it was some fellow drunk; and this was confirmed by a heavy fall, which the unfortunate took as soon as, leaving the railing, he attempted to travel _suis pedibus_.

“Oh! good Lord!” groaned the fallen man; “who’d a thought it. Me, John P. Pullum, drunk and fallen down! I never was so before. This world’s a turnin’ over and over. Oh, Lord! Charley Stone got me into it. What will Sally say if she hears it? Oh, Lord!”

“That thar feller,” said the Captain to himself, “is the victim of vice. I wonder ef he’s got any money?” and the Captain continued his soliloquy inaudibly.

Poor Mr. Pullum, after much tumbling about, and sundry repetitions of his fall, at length contrived to get into bed, in a room adjoining that occupied by the Captain, and only separated from it by a thin partition.

“I’m very—very—oh, Lord!—drunk! Oh! me, is this John P. Pullum that—good Heavens! I’ll faint—married Sally Rugby, oh! oh!”

“Ah! I’m so weak!—wouldn’t have Sally—aw—owh—wha—oh, Lord!—to hear of it for a hundred dollars! She said when she agreed for me to sell the cotton, I’d be certain—oh, Lord! I believe I’ll die!”

The inebriate fell back on his bed, almost fainting, and Captain Suggs thought he’d try an experiment. Disguising his voice, with his mouth close to the partition, he said:

“You’re a liar! you didn’t marry Widow Rugby; your some thief tryin’ to pass off for something.”

“Who am I then, if I ain’t John P. Pullum, that married the widdow Sally Rugby, Tom Rugby’s widow, old Bill Stearns’s only daughter? Oh, Lord! ef it ain’t me, who is it? Where’s Charley Stone—can’t he tell if it’s John P. Pullum?”

“No, it ain’t you, you lyin’ swindler; you ain’t got a dollar in the world, and never married no sich widow,” said Suggs, still disguising his voice.

“I did—I’ll be hanged if I didn’t. I know it now; Sally Rugby with the red head, all of the boys said I married her for her money, but it’s a—oh, Lord I’m very ill.”

Mr. Pullum continued his maudlin talk, half asleep, half awake, for some time; and all the while Captain Suggs was analysing the man—conjecturing his precise circumstances, his family relations, the probable state of his purse, and the like.

“It’s a plain case,” he mused, “that the feller married a red-headed widow for her money—no man ever married sich for anything else. It’s plain agin, she’s got the property settled upon her, or fixed some way, for he talked about her ‘agreein’ for him to sell the cotton. I’ll bet he’s the new feller that’s dropped in down thar by Tallassee, that Charley Stone used to know. And I’ll bet he’s been down to Wetumpka to sell the cotton—got on a bust thar—and now’s on another here. He’s afeard of his wife too; leastways, his voice trembled like it, when he called her red-headed, Pullum! Pullum! Pullum!” Here Suggs studied. “That’s surely a Talbot county name—I’ll venture on it, anyhow.”

Having reached a conclusion, the Captain turned over in bed and composed himself for sleep.

At nine o’clock the next morning, the bar-room of the “Union” contained only Dennis and our friend the Captain. Breakfast was over, and the most of the temporary occupants of the tavern were in the public square. Captain Suggs was watching for Mr. Pullum, who had not yet come down to breakfast.

At length an uncertain step was heard on the stairway, and a young man, whose face showed indisputable evidence of a frolic on the previous night, descended. His eyes were bloodshot, and his expression was a mingled one of shame and fear. Captain Suggs walked up to him, as he entered the bar-room, gazed at his face earnestly, and slowly placing his hand on his shoulder, as slowly, and with a stern expression, said:

“Your—name—is—Pullum!”

“I know it is,” said the young man.

“Come this way then,” said Suggs, pulling his victim out into the street, and still gazing at him with the look of a stern but affectionate parent. Turning to Dennis as they went out, he said:

“Have a cup of coffee ready for this young man in fifteen minutes, and his horse by the time he’s done drinking it.”

Mr. Pullum looked confounded, but said nothing, and he and the Captain walked over to a vacant blacksmith’s shop across the street, where they could be free from observation.

“You’re from Wetumpka last,” remarked Suggs with severity, and as if his words charged a crime.

“What if I am?” replied Pullum, with an effort to appear bold.

“What’s cotton worth?” asked the Captain, with an almost imperceptible wink.

Pullum turned white and stammered out:

“Seven or eight cents.”

“Which will you tell your wife you sold yours—_hers_ for?”

John P. turned blue in the face.

“What do you know about my wife?” he asked.

“Never mind about _that_. Was you in the habit of gettin’ drunk before you left Talbot county, Georgy?”

“I never lived in Talbot; I was born and raised in Hanis,” said Pullum, with something like triumph.

“Close to the line, though,” replied Suggs, confidently relying on the fact that there was a large family of Pullums in Talbot; “most of your connexions lived in Talbot.”

“Well, what of all that?” asked Pullum, with impatience; “what is it to you whar I come from, or whar my connexion lived?”

“Never mind—I’ll show you—no man that married Billy Stearns’s daughter can carry on in the way _you’ve been doin’_, without my interferin’ for the intrust of the family!”

Suggs said this with an earnestness, a sternness, that completely vanquished Pullum. He tremulously asked:

“How did you know that I married Stearns’s daughter?”

“That’s a fact ’most anybody could have known that was intimate with the family in old times. You’d better ask how I knowed that you tuk _your wife’s_ cotton to Wetumpka—sold it—got on a spree—after Sally give you a caution too—and then came by here, _got on another spree_. What do you reckon Sally will say to you when you get home?”

“She won’t know it,” replied Pullum, “unless somebody tells her.”

“Somebody _will tell her_,” said Suggs, “I’m going home with you as soon as you’ve had breakfast. My poor Sally Rugby shall not be trampled on in this way. I’ve only got to borrow fifty dollars from some of the boys, to make out a couple of thousand. I need to make the last payment on my land. So go over and eat your breakfast quick.”

“For God’s sake, Sir, don’t tell Sally about it; you don’t know how unreasonable she is.”

Pullum was the incarnation of misery.

“The divil I don’t! she bit this piece out of my face,” here Suggs pointed to a scar on his cheek, “when I had her on my lap a little girl only five years old. She was always game.”

Pullum grew more nervous at this reference to his wife’s mettle.

“My dear Sir, I don’t even know your name.”

“Suggs, Sir—Captain Simon Suggs.”

“Well, my dear Captain, ef you’ll just let me off this time, I’ll lend you the fifty dollars.”

“_You’ll—lend—me—the—fifty—dollars!_ _Who_ asked _you_ for your money, or rather _Sally’s_ money?”

“I only thought,” replied the humble husband of Sally, “that it might be an accommodation. I meant no harm; I know Sally wouldn’t mind my lending it to an old friend of the family.”

“Well,” said Suggs, and here he mused, shutting his eyes, biting his lips, and talking very slowly, “ef I knowed you would do better.”

“I’ll swear I will,” said Pullum.

“No swearin’, Sir!” roared Suggs, with a dreadful frown; “no swearin’ in _my_ presence!”

“No, Sir, I won’t any more.”

“Ef,” continued the Captain, “I _knowed_ you’d do better—_go right home_,” (the Captain didn’t wish Pullum to stay where his stock of information might be increased); “and treat Sally like a wife all the rest of your days, I might, _may be_, borrow the fifty, (seein’ it’s Sally’s any way), and let you off this time.”

“Ef you will, Captain Suggs, I’ll never forget you; I’ll think of you all the days of my life.”

“I ginnarally makes my mark, so that I’m hard to forget,” said the Captain, _truthfully_. “Well, turn me over a fifty for a couple of months, and go home.”

Mr. Pullum handed the money to Suggs, who seemed to receive it reluctantly. He twisted the bill in his fingers, and remarked:

“I reckon I’d better not take this money; you won’t go home, and do as you said.”

“Yes, I will,” said Pullum; “yonder’s my horse at the door. I’ll start this minute.”

The Captain and Pullum returned to the tavern, where the latter swallowed his coffee and paid his bill.

As the young man mounted his horse, Suggs took him affectionately by the hand.

“John,” said he, “go home, give my love to cousin Sally, and kiss her for me. Try and do better, John, for the futur’; and ef you have any children, John, bring ’em up in the way of the Lord. Good-bye!”

Captain Suggs now paid _his_ bill, and had a balance on hand. He immediately bestrode his faithful “Bill,” musing thus as he moved homeward:

“Every day I git more insight into things. It used to be, I couldn’t understand the manna in the wilderness, and the ravens feedin’ Elishy; now, it’s clear to my eyes. Trust in Providence—that’s the lick! Here was I in the wilderness, sorely oppressed, and mighty nigh despar, Pullum come to me, like a ‘raven,’ in my distress—and a _fat_ one, at that! Well, as I’ve _allers_ said, honesty and Providence will never fail to fetch a man out! Jist give me that for a _hand_, and I’ll ‘stand’ agin all creation?”

IV. THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS.[7]

A steam-boat on the Mississippi frequently, in making her regular trips, carries between places varying from one to two thousand miles apart; and as these boats advertise to land passengers and freight at “all intermediate landings,” the heterogeneous character of the passengers of one of these up-country boats can scarcely be imagined by one who has never seen it with his own eyes.

Starting from New Orleans in one of these boats, you will find yourself associated with men from every state in the Union, and from every portion of the globe; and a man of observation need not lack for amusement or instruction in such a crowd, if he will take the trouble to read the great book of character so favourably opened before him. Here may be seen jostling together the wealthy Southern planter, and the pedlar of tin-ware from New England—the Northern merchant, and the Southern jockey—a venerable bishop, and a desperate gambler—the land speculator, and the honest farmer—professional men of all creeds and characters—Wolvereens, Suckers, Hoosiers, Buck-eyes, and Corncrackers, beside a “plentiful sprinkling” of the half-horse and half-alligator species of men, who are peculiar to “old Mississippi,” and who appear to gain a livelihood simply by going up and down the river. In the pursuit of pleasure or business, I have frequently found myself in such a crowd.

On one occasion, when in New Orleans, I had occasion to take a trip of a few miles up the Mississippi, and I hurried on board the well-known “high-pressure-and-beat-every-thing” steam-boat “Invincible,” just as the last note of the last bell was sounding; and when the confusion and bustle that is natural to a boat’s getting under way had subsided, I discovered that I was associated in as heterogeneous a crowd as was ever got together. As my trip was to be of a few hours’ duration only, I made no endeavours to become acquainted with my fellow passengers, most of whom would be together many days. Instead of this, I took out of my pocket the “latest paper,” and more critically than usual examined its contents; my fellow passengers at the same time disposed of themselves in little groups.

While I was thus busily employed in reading, and my companions were more busily still employed in discussing such subjects as suited their humours best, we were startled most unexpectedly by a loud Indian whoop, uttered in the “social hall,” that part of the cabin fitted off for a bar; then was to be heard a loud crowing, which would not have continued to have interested us—such sounds being quite common in that _place of spirits_—had not the hero of these windy accomplishments stuck his head into the cabin and hallooed out, “Hurra for the Big Bar of Arkansaw!” and then might be heard a confused hum of voices, unintelligible, save in such broken sentences as “horse,” “screamer,” “lightning is slow,” &c.

As might have been expected, this continued interruption attracted the attention of every one in the cabin; all conversation dropped, and in the midst of this surprise, the “Big Bar” walked into the cabin, took a chair, put his feet on the stove, and looking back over his shoulder, passed the general and familiar salute of “Strangers, how are you?” He then expressed himself as much at home as if he had been at “the Forks of Cypress,” and “prehaps a little more so.”

There was something about the intruder that won the heart on sight. He appeared to be a man enjoying perfect health and contentment: his eyes were as sparkling as diamonds, and good-natured to simplicity. Then his perfect confidence in himself was irresistibly droll.

“Prehaps,” said he, “gentlemen,” running on without a person speaking, “prehaps you have been to New Orleans often; I never made _the first visit before_, and I don’t intend to make another in a crow’s life. I am thrown away in that ar place, and useless, that ar a fact. Some of the gentlemen thar called me _green_—well, prehaps I am, said I, _but I arn’t so at home_; and if I ain’t off my trail much, the heads of them perlite chaps themselves wern’t much the hardest; for according to my notion, they were _real know-nothings_, green as a pumpkin-vine—couldn’t, in farming, I’ll bet, raise a crop of turnips: and as for shooting, they’d miss a barn if the door was swinging, and that, too, with the best rifle in the country. And then they talked to me ’bout hunting, and laughed at my calling the principal game in Arkansaw, poker, and high-low-jack.

“‘Prehaps,’ said I, ‘you prefer chickens and rolette;’ at this they laughed harder than ever, and asked me if I lived in the woods, and didn’t know what _game_ was? At this I rather think I laughed. ‘Yes,’ I roared, and says, ‘Strangers, if you’d asked me _how we got our meat_ in Arkansaw, I’d a told you at once, and given you a list of varmints that would make a caravan, beginning with the bar, and ending off with the cat; that’s _meat_ though, not game.’

“Game, indeed, that’s what city folks call it; and with them it means chippen-birds and bitterns; maybe such trash live in my diggins, but I arn’t noticed them yet: a bird any way is too trifling. I never did shoot at but one, and I’d never forgiven myself for that, had it weighed less than forty pounds. I wouldn’t draw a rifle on anything less than that; and when I meet with another wild turkey of the same weight I’ll drap him.”

“A wild turkey weighing forty pounds!” exclaimed twenty voices in the cabin at once.

“Yes, strangers, and wasn’t it a whopper? You see, the thing was so fat that it couldn’t fly far; and when he fell out of the tree, after I shot him, on striking the ground he bust open, and the way the pound gobs of tallow rolled out of the opening was perfectly beautiful.”

“Where did all that happen?” asked a cynical-looking Hoosier.

“Happen! happened in Arkansaw: where else could it have happened, but in the creation state, the finishing-up country—a state where the _sile_ runs down to the centre of the ’arth, and Government gives you a title to every inch of it? Then its airs—just breathe them, and they will make you snort like a horse. It’s a state without a fault, it is.”

“Excepting mosquitoes,” cried the Hoosier.

“Well, stranger, except them; for it ar a fact that they are rather _enormous_, and do push themselves in somewhat troublesome. But, stranger, they never stick twice in the same place; and give them a fair chance for a few months, and you will get as much above noticing them as an alligator. They can’t hurt my feelings, for they lay under the skin; and I never knew but one case of injury resulting from them, and that was to a Yankee: and they take worse to foreigners, any how, than they do to natives. But the way they used that fellow up! first they punched him until he swelled up and busted; then he sup-per-a-ted, as the doctor called it, until he was as raw as beef; then he took the ager, owing to the warm weather, and finally he took a steam-boat, and left the country. He was the only man that ever took mosquitoes at heart that I know of. But mosquitoes is natur, and I never find fault with her. If they ar large, Arkansaw is large, her varmints ar large, her trees ar large, her rivers ar large, and a small mosquitoe would be of no more use in Arkansaw than preaching in a cane-brake.”

This knock-down argument in favour of big mosquitoes used the Hoosier up, and the logician started on a new track, to explain how numerous bear were in his “diggins,” where he represented them to be “about as plenty as blackberries, and a little plentifuler.”

Upon the utterance of this assertion, a timid little man near me inquired if the bear in Arkansaw ever attacked the settlers in numbers.